Hospital & rehab

...not a normal followup from a bike ride

I don't recommend that you follow in my footsteps...

I spent a week in Mass General Hospital (MGH) followed by a week at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. I suspect that if I didn't have someone to stay with me on my release that my stay in the rehab hospital may have been longer.

I've been told I was in three different places at MGH, starting with neurological ICU, moving to a neurology bed, and ending in a trauma bed. You could fool me... Intensive care? That's not in my memory, although I'm told that I was talking and interacting with people throughout. Hmmm... Actually, I have very little memory of my time in the hospital, although I do remember my visitors. I may not have been speaking with them normally - and I initially had a short-term memory problem so it's more than likely that I repeated the same comments and questions - but I remember the folks who took time out of their busy lives to visit me, and I greatly appreciated the visits.

I have one story from my stay at MGH, courtesy of my mother who was there with me every day. She told me about the nurses working at getting me walking in the hospital - because of course they want you to get up and moving. In my case there apparently was a bit of a delay - for my first four days there my chart specified bed rest. No walking, nothing. Then it was time to move. They gave me crutches, and I tried to use them but apparently said they were no good for me. The nurse agreed, and came back the next day with a walker. That didn't exactly do what the nurse thought it should since my reaction to the walker was to pick the thing up, walk for a number of steps carrying the walker, then put it down. And repeat. That must have been a sight! It certainly wasn't what the walker was meant for, so I quickly graduated to walking without an aid device.

And I even had a visit from a 4-legged friend! Well, I guess I should call him a 4-legged stranger. On the second to last day I was at MGH, a volunteer came by and asked if I'd like a visit from a dog. Of course I said yes - it was a nice change of pace and a pleasure to meet her big guy! I still couldn't ride my bike, but I could commune with a friendly dog who was happy to listen to me...

I do remember my time at Spaulding Rehab though - beginning with an ambulance ride for a short distance across Boston. The two hospitals are really within walking distance of one another - even though Spaulding is kind of set off by itself in the shadow of the Big Dig - but ambulance transportation was the order of the day for this gal. I was quickly settled into a room with the roommate from hell. That lasted for two full days and three nights until a nurse kindly told me I could request another room - which I did the morning after an exceptionally bad night. My new roommate was a very nice older woman (I think she said she was 87) who was recovering from knee surgery. What a huge improvement! Problem solved, and another lesson learned - it never hurts to request a new room! It's hard to share a room with a total stranger, and I think successful sharing involves a shared respect for one another. That didn't exist with in my first roommate, but my second was an absolute gem.

I had help from friends - again - as I got settled at Spaulding. Pam went to my house to pick up comfortable clothes for me since the recommended attire was normal clothing. A T-shirt, lightweight workout pants, and sneakers were a huge improvement over a hospital gown!

I've always appreciated my friends, and this experience really highlighted how very important good friends (including family!) really are.

It was partway through my stay at Spaulding when I discovered an interesting problem as I was moving from a standing (or sitting) position to laying down - and the same problem in reverse. It turned out that I have a condition called post traumatic benign vertigo, which is exactly what it sounds like - exteme dizziness (as in wow! the room is spinning) on switching between vertical and horizontal positions. I learned when I needed to get out of bed - as in, the bathroom is calling - that I needed to sit on the edge of the bed for a minute before I attempted to stand. Somehow I managed to not end up on the floor during any of my transitions!

The rebab hospital was an interesting experience to say the least. My expectations were that I would spend a lot of time working on improving from a physical standpoint - but looking back I don't think that was really the point. The fact is that I had significant injuries and probably needed to continue to be in a place with readily available medical care. But still, my focus was on trying to do everything I could to help myself get better faster.

Let's see, I was in Spaulding Rehab over a holiday weekend. I always thought that hospitals were one of the places that still pretty much had full services over the weekend. Well, I was wrong. I believe there was the normal contingent of nursing staff, but other services OT (occupational therapy), PT (physical therapy), etc. were running with minimal staff and services were definitely curtailed over the weekend. Well, I needed to be there anyway - I clearly wasn't ready to be home on my own yet - but you know me and exercise... I was very lucky that my mom stayed and was there every day (nothing like a 52-year old relying on her mother!!!) because I don't believe I would have been allowed off the floor on my own. In fact for the first couple of days I wasn't supposed to leave my room by myself. With her there, I was able to walk up and down the hall on my floor, visit with other patients who were also pacing the floors, and - luckily - walk outside by the river. The sidewalks were mostly under construction, so we were pretty limited as to where we could walk, but it was great to be able to get outside!

PT? Well, in the short physical therapy sessions I had, they had me do some exercises between parallel bars so I had something to grab if I was off balance. Then I walked up a flight of 3 stairs several times. After the first couple of days I graduated to the stairwells. The physical therapist wanted me to walk up the steps one foot at a time to the same step. That is, left foot to the first step, right foot to the first step, left foot to the second step - well, you get it! That lasted about 3 steps, and then I started walking up (and down) the stairs like a normal person. I must have been a very annoying (and demanding) patient!

My mom - talking to my case manager on my second day at Spaulding Rehab - mentioned that it would be a good thing if I could have access to a computer. And amazingly enough, there were computers with Internet access available to rent - at $7 a day. In the overall scheme of things that was money well spent since it allowed me to catch up on email, catch up with my biking buddies, and start to see what was going on in the world.